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Policy Statements: Biofuel Sustainability
Ecological Society of America (ESA)
…The sustainability of alternative biofuel production systems must be assessed now, in order to maximize the potential for developing truly sustainable scenarios – that is, profitable systems that can provide adequate biomass with the least amount of environmental damage.
Biomass extraction and the byproducts of biofuel manufacturing will directly affect ecosystems in many ways. Much of the biomass needed for biofuel production will be supplied by croplands. Marginal croplands will be farmed more intensively and previously unfarmed areas will be brought into production. As this happens, the U.S. landscape will change. Current technologies emphasize use of annual and perennial grains. However, crop “leftovers,” such as corn husks and wheat straw, and fiber from perennial crops such as switch grass are likely to contribute as well. The exact mix will depend on a number of factors including, emerging technologies, market prices, and policy incentives. That mix will have a major impact on both the long-term sustainability of the biofuel enterprise and on the underlying health of U.S. ecosystems.
The current focus on ethanol from corn illustrates the risks of exploiting a single source of biomass for biofuel production. A growing percentage of the U.S. corn harvest – 18 percent in 2006 – is directed towards grain ethanol production. This has not only resulted in record-high corn prices, it has produced strong incentives for continuously-grown corn, higher-than-optimal use of nitrogen fertilizers, the early return of land in conservation programs to production, and the conversion of marginal lands to high-intensity cropping. All of these changes exacerbate well-known environmental problems associated with intensive agriculture:
- Continuously-grown corn is more susceptible to insect damage and allows weeds to become more persistent, requiring more insecticides and herbicides.
- Nitrogen fertilizer is the principal contributor to nitrogen pollution of groundwater, surface waters, and coastal zones, and a major source of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide.
- Placing previously fallow land enrolled in conservation programs back into production reduces wildlife diversity, requires irrigation, and releases carbon dioxide.
- Converting marginal lands to agriculture or farming them more intensively creates new sources of agricultural pollution and, in many cases, disproportionately increases nutrient loss and soil erosion; many of these lands are marginal to begin with because they are on sloping, sandy, or wet soils particularly susceptible to soil and nutrient loss.
(January 2008)
Is ethanol everybody’s fuel?
Roger Cohen, International Herald Tribune
… Machines that plant and harvest are slowly spreading across the great expanse of Brazilian cane fields. But Danuza’s harsh existence is a reminder that behind the global buzz over Brazil’s cane-based ethanol production – the 21st century’s environment-friendly bio-fuel par excellence – lurk enduring social problems.
Ethanol, renewable and relatively clean, is lovely. The life of the migrant Brazilian rural worker, finite and hot, is not.
… Brazil has led the way in demonstrating the potential of ethanol, has vast land resources to develop the industry, uses sugar-based ethanol whose productivity is far greater than U.S. corn ethanol being developed at the cost of higher food prices, and has shown the feasibility of a flex-fuel auto fleet.
But a day spent visiting the cane-production facilities of CBAA, a major sugar and ethanol manufacturer, revealed the hardships and difficult social conditions from which these achievements were wrested.
(9 January 2008)
Growing Fuel: Ethanol’s Minnesota Roots
Mark Neuzil, MinnPost.com
In a four-part, four-day series that began Monday, Jan. 7, 2008, reporters Ron Way and Mark Neuzil examine corn ethanol in Minnesota for the on-line news source Minnpost. The series looks at how Minnesota became a political hotbed for ethanol production and subsidies, the ecology of corn ethanol, the economics of ethanol and alternatives.
(9 January 2008)
